“Zander’s right,” I told M.K. “The only way to stop the flow is to get BNDL to bring down pipes and equipment.”
“This is awful,” Zander said angrily. “Do you know what we’ve done? Do you know how many animals, how many fish and birds may die because you wanted to protect that map? There are species here that no human being has ever seen. And now no one will ever see them because they’ll be gone.”
With a rush of air bubbles and black silt, another huge chunk of the city disappeared
“Go,” I told M.K. “Go now!” Amy was making terrible grinding and wheezing noises.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.” M.K. worked away at the controls, checking pressure gauges and pushing buttons to release more steam, trying to figure out what was going wrong. She eased the throttle forward, but we barely moved. M.K. flipped a few more levers and after a few minutes, Amy sounded a little better. We seemed to be moving with more power.
And then we heard a boom and saw, in the distance, a huge cloud rise up from the ocean floor as what was left of the city collapsed down into the trench, disappearing in a swirl of sand and dark water. “Go!” I shouted to M.K. “It’s coming down! It’ll bury us!”
“I’m trying!” M.K. shouted as she flipped a lever. She pushed the throttle all the way up and Amy shot forward, up, up, away from the oily cloud of sand rising from the trench.
“I can’t look at it,” Sukey said. “Why do they have to destroy it?”
“They don’t want the city to be discovered,” I whispered.
“But why?” Zander asked me. “They destroyed the map.”
I thought about it. “I think it’s about something even bigger than the map, but I don’t know what it is. I think that they don’t want anyone to know about the city. They’re willing to destroy it in order to keep it a secret. But I don’t know why.”
We chugged back the way we’d come, out of Girafalco’s Trench and up into shallower waters. Up ahead, we saw the ghostly shapes of the shipwrecks rising out of the darkness. They were like dead trees, the broken masts bobbing gently with the current. Zander and Sukey and I pressed our faces to the glass.
“Amy’s not happy, but she’s running,” M.K. said. “We’ve got to get back up as soon as we can. Kit, look . . .”
Sunlight was now filtering through the water, and beyond the wrecks we saw undulating fields of seaweed and hovering anenomes. We made our way slowly through the water.
But something was wrong.
“Where are all the fish?” M.K. said.
The sea stretched all around us, empty of life. The anemones and coral remained, but the fish were gone.
“Do the fish know?” Sukey asked. “Do they know that BNDL’s coming?”
Zander watched the empty void. “I don’t know. But they’re all gone. Nothing’s there. Not a single fish.”
And then suddenly, there were thousands of fish swimming past us in huge schools. We couldn’t tell where one began and another ended.
“They’re swimming away from the oil!” Zander said.
“Look at that one,” M.K. said. “And that one . . .” I followed her gaze.
Some of the fish were slowing down, then sinking, unable to swim.
It’s killing them,” Zander said. “But I don’t know. . . . They’re all going the same direction.”
It was like standing in a field on a blustery day and watching as a rain cloud blew by, leaving blue sky behind it. The waves of fish went by and then we were all alone again in the silent ocean.
And then we saw it, wriggling up slowly toward us out of the deep, a giant black form twisting through the water. It was, I realized with horror, a gigantic version of the eels on the island, its white teeth gleaming, its mouth opening to attack Amy.
“What is that?” M.K. asked, fumbling with the controls.
“It’s an eel,” Sukey said. “It’s a really giant eel.”
“Dive!” I shouted. M.K. steered Amy into a dive. Through the side windows, I could see the eel following us through the murk, and M.K. pulled us up again. But the eel kept coming. “Here it comes. Get us out of here, M.K!”
“It’s huge,” she shouted. “I don’t know if I can get away.”
“It’s coming!” Zander said.
It swam up slowly, its body twisting, one eye staring at us through the cockpit glass. M.K. pushed the throttle all the way up and Amy shot ahead, but the eel followed, curious about this strange octopus. It kept pace with us easily, twisting through the water.
“How far are we from the beach?” M.K. asked.
“I don’t know.” I checked my compass to make sure we were going in the right direction.
M.K. kept Amy moving quickly through the water and I thought we were going to get away, but when we tilted up toward the surface, there it was in front of us again, rising up, its enormous mouth open and ready for attack.
Sukey screamed. She reached for the tentacle controls and swung the pincer arm at the eel, but it barely noticed what must have felt like nothing more than a tap on the back.
“Try the hose,” M.K. said.
But before Sukey could engage the hose arm, the eel struck the glass with a terrible bang and we watched in horror as a thin crack appeared on the windshield.
“Come on, Amy. Come on.” I could feel Amy go a little faster. But not fast enough. The eel seemed to be maddened by the fact that it hadn’t been able to get us, and it reared up once again.
We all watched as its body grew rigid and its huge eye fixed on us.
“Oh god,” I whispered.
But just before it attacked, it hesitated, its body rippling as it turned its head toward some far-off sound or smell.
“What is it? Is it the turtles?” M.K. asked.
I couldn’t see anything through the dark water.
The eel looked at us again, and then it was spiraling away toward the bottom of the ocean.
I peered through the water and then I saw a cloud of thin black curls easing toward us, twisting through the water.
“It’s the oil,” I called out.
“I’m taking us up,” M.K. said. “We can’t let it get into the engine.”
We sped away from the oily cloud through the water. “I think we’re almost back to the island,” M.K. said. “There’s the coral reef.”
Up ahead, the reef still buzzed with life, fish and small eels swimming over the sandy floor, the sunlight filtering through the gentle waves and casting shimmering patterns on the floor.
I felt the tension leave my body, but Zander was becoming more and more agitated. “It’s a disaster. It’s going to kill everything in the ocean. Why did you have to do that? Why did we have to destroy that map? If you hadn’t destroyed the map, that never would have happened.”
“We had to,” I said. “You know that. The turtles were destroying it anyway. The oil would have come out when the city crumbled.” I tried to convince myself.
“But we’re killing off hundreds of species. We’re destroying an ecosystem that doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth. And for what? A map? A map only you’re allowed to see? I don’t know what you think Dad intended to happen, but it can’t be this. You don’t even know what it’s a map of. You don’t know if you’ll ever find out. And down here, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of species of fish and animals, and we’ve made them extinct before anyone can ever see them!”
“Dad wouldn’t have told me to—”
“Dad! Dad! I’m tired of you talking about Dad as though you have some secret line of communication to him. Where is he? If he wants you to do this so much, then where is he? Where is he, Kit?” Zander grasped my shoulder so hard it hurt. His eyes were furious. I’d never really been afraid of him until now.
“Stop!” Sukey yelled. “This isn’t the time. We’re back at the island. What are we going to tell them? We’ve been gone for hours.”
Zander let go of me and turned to look out the window at the life all around us. “We’ll figure something out,” I said. “It’s still early. Let’s leave Amy on the other beach. Maybe we can sneak back and get into the tents without waking them up.”
Amy rose up and up, a white veil of air bubbles covering the windows as we surfaced into sunlight. M.K. maneuvered Amy up onto the beach as best she could and Zander, Sukey, and I helped to pull her up even higher. Pucci was waiting for us in a palm tree, and he started to greet us, squawking. Zander hushed him and made him stay on his shoulder.
The sun was rising above the horizon now and the sky turned a beautiful pink-orange as we walked through the sparse trees and low bushes in single file, trying to be as quiet as possible. I was in the rear, looking up at the morning sky, and suddenly bumped into M.K., who had stopped just in front of me. Joyce was on the path ahead of us, holding one of the water receptacles we’d made from palm fronds, two swords hanging from a piece of rope around her waist. I checked for Njamba and found her flying overhead. Joyce put a finger to her lips before we could say anything, and then she silently beckoned us to follow her. We walked along the path for another hundred feet before she stopped and pointed.
Through the trees, we could see the bright purple sails of a big sailing catamaran anchored just off Castaway Beach.